Galen

Vickles- Once I had to muster in the morning in formation and they made a HUGE effort to remind us that this particular formation we all had to wear hard-hats and steel-toe-shoes. [it was kind of stupid as we were stationed inside of a shipyard where you HAD to wear a hard-hat and steel-toe-shoes just to get in through the gate. So I thought that they were being real stupid for this one morning's muster] So I showed up wearing my hard-hat and steel-toe-shoes, and my security badge. Afterwards it was made known that they wanted us to wear entire uniforms ALSO. You know like underwear and shirt and pants. But like I said, we always wear uniforms, you made a huge deal that today we should wear hard-hats and steel-toes, so obviously today you only wanted us to wear those items. They still got upset, I had to leave and get dressed. Did you know that inside a shipyard, a man walking by with nothing on but a hard-hat and safety-shoes does not draw any un-due attention. Naval officers never have a good sense of humour.

Sudo: "Uh, just so you know.. HOW you connect to the internet has nothing to do with pop-ups. You get pop-ups depending on what sites you go to." Hmm, actually I think your wrong. Yes many things these days have pop-ups, but many 'free' things include pop-ups, I have played with a couple 'free' dial-up services and their pop-ups were horrible and banners were crazy. :-)

MATILDA: "A thousand years later, when I met up with some guys I went to school with back then...told me they wanted to ask me, but thought I was too pretty to say "yes." EEK! I was expelled from my first high school, and didn't much care for the one I granulated from, but I wish someone would have asked. I thought it was me... I have a damaged psyche now. Ow." I remember that there were a few girls that I would have liked to have gone out with, but was intimidated by their great looks. It does happen. I did go out with a number of girls though I kept asking out the shy quiet bland looking girls. I worked full-time [after school] and moved in with a family that had some boys that I knew, their father was always trying to get me to stop approaching 'ugly' girls and to hit on the good looking ones. But I never listened to him, I kept going out with the girls that did not intimidate me I guess. Years later he did remind me of it all, and I kind of wish that I had taken his advise. I think that at the time, I was mostly focused on trying to blend in with the crowd, anytime I stood out I got beat-up. After a few times, I got tired of getting my nose-broke. I tried out for the wrestling team as a freshman, I wrestled in the 95 pound weight class. When I graduated I weighed 135. Today even our 14 year old son weighs more than I did going into the Navy. It most certainly is true that some boys would be intimidate to ask a good looking girl, as it would be another reason to get beat-up. P.S. There is hope, even for the skinny little runts in a class, I filled out in my 30's. :-)

skyrider: "BUT there certainly wasn't the control structure that existed from the trunk office on down. And, from the many branches where I was assigned.....the control and double checking of military men's finances and mortgages was virtually nonexistent." Everyone 'knows' how poor enlisted men are. :-) Trunk office? I usually had to deal with limb offices, trying to get PFAL classes and what not, corpse guys giving me greif for "how dare you run all these classes without a corpse-grad to coordinate the class" kind of stuff. We were always fighting limbs. "That was the reason why Paxl Norcrxss was assigned to oversee the military work. It was like a separate department within the Trunk Office framework......very different variables." I was told to talk with Paul Norcross once, when I was "Country-Coordinator-for-americans-stationed-in-Scotland" [that was the title Chris Kent at Gartmore gave me]. We left messages for Norcross a bunch of times, then finally someone told Kent to just give me the class tapes. When he did show up, we still had to strong arm the tapes from him. He tried to lay some wierd junk on us, about why we did not have a solid schedule for fellowship [we were all in rotating shift-work, so we were doing fellowships everynight it just changed as to who was actually home on any given night]. It was funny 4 guys held him against the wall, while another went out to his car and got the tapes. Good thing we were all beleivers, or else he could have gotten hurt. Actually he was probably one of the nicest corpse-grads that we ever did work with. I have never met Norcross, and I dont thnk we ever did manage to speak with him. Just left a lot of messages. I never heard of Steve Axtxll. I am sure that they did a lot for the military, I just never heard of him. I was only in TWI for a short time [1978-1997]. Each branch of the military has separate bases, and we usually dont inter-act with guys from other forces much. Were these guys Army? Air Force? Marines? It would account for why I never crossed their paths. We were simply on different bases. :-)

'Mostly neked' Hmm, didn;t they have on G-strings, pastees and high-heeled spikes? For drunk sailors that a lot of clothing.

vickles: "Galen, Maybe thats why you saw a different kind of twi than a lot of us?" Absolutely. 1. Stay away from Nazi-Corpse [the over-whelming majority of everything we ever heard from a corspe's mouth was too bizarre to be taken seriously anyway], 2. most fellowships 'at-home' include a home-cooked-meal, 3. care for the people your ministering to, 4. and love them. 5. We also focused a lot on doing exhaustive-word-studies as a group in twig. So that everyone had experience and was comfortable doing them. This way when your the only beleiver on a sub you can keep occupied for 105 days underwater. :-)

vickles: "There is an apartment building I've had my eye on for a while. I only know about this by word of mouth. The owner is in his seventies and getting to old to want to take care of it anymore. He wants to sell for 60,000." That is cheap, how many apartments does it have? "It does need some new windows, which I can get for 35.00 because I work in a window factory. So that wouldn't be a problem. He isn't in any hurry to sell, just wants to unload it." The closer you look, the more things yo will find that it needs trust me. Also consider would this old guy settle for any kind of a living-trust kind of thing? Like buy it from him, and guarantee that he can still live there for as long as he lives, for free, king of thing. So he does not have to move. Many times older people just want someone else to do maintenance, but also a place for them to live. "So I think I need to work on my credit in order to get this going." That is a small loan. "The house thing would probably be too much work for the profit. I would have to hire someone to do most of the work for these houses so I would not be making much." Two ideas here. House can not be done for profit? Do you mean to fix it and attempt to resale? No likely not. But that is bad form anyway. and something that I would advize against in any case. Are you 'handy'? You will need the services of a carpenter, a plumber and an electrician, period. No way to escape it. If you have to hire someone to do any of these things then stop, and dont do it. To me each of these things is easy. Any small hardware store with elderly contractors stocking the shelves will advise you on each project and tell you exactly what to do and what to look for. The BIG corporate hardware 'Wally-Worlds' will give advise, but they are rarely contractors with experience, so what they tell you is just to get you to buy from them, dont trust them. So long as you have 3 apartments, you can make a good profit for the rest of your life, less than 3, like a duplex will keep you in the poor-house. The math just does not support doing anything with less than 3 apartments. But fill the apartments, and walk around filling a notepad with everything that needs to be fixed. Ask the renters what THEY want fixed first [this gives them 'empowerment' and they will love you for it]. Fix one thing each month. Maybe even limit yourself to not spending anymore then $500/month on materials. Over a period of a couple years, everything is fixed and your all good. :-)

vickles: "uh uh, well, I was in a titty bar one time...alfakat's buddy tricked me into going into one not knowing it was a titty bar." So your saying that you walked into a titty-bar, yet without knowing that it was a titty-bar? What was the first clue? Maybe the "LIVE GIRLS ON STAGE" signs out at the sidewalk, or the "LIVE GIRLS ON STAGE" signs over the door, or the "TOPLESS TOPLESS TOPLESS" signs in the windows? :-)

Mike: "Galen, Say the word and I'm gone!" LOL LOL LOL You smoking crack or what? I love this. :-)

Those of us who did run twigs on base found very eager and willing audiences. :-)

Steve!: Ummm, vickles, how do you know this with such certainty? ;)--> Now I have been inside a few titty bars over the years, and I would have to say that generally there were in fact other men in these bars as well. I dont recall if these other men were more tending to be thin or fat. I dont think, that if I walked into one to this day, I would be able to remember what the other men looked like, upon leaving the bar. Are you saying that you have stood in a titty bar, and actually noticed the build of other men there? Did the bar have any employees? Were there actually ladies dancing and working to entertain you, while you were noticing these other men? Are you saying that regular attendance to a titty bar would cause a fellow to lose weight? I would be willing to try. Just purely for scientific reasons mind you. :-) Does anyone else want to try this 'purely scientific research' with me? dont have to be only guys now.

Do you have any of the Doctor Dino series? They have great pictures of huge creatures that have washed up on beaches around the world. Mostly very big, and all of them un-documented species. :-)

skyrider: "Galen....from your posts, you moved around alot with the military." Yes generally every three years. "From my experiences, I can tell you that the military personnel in twi were in a whole different situation. Generally, they were given lots of leeway.....if they had duty or commitments on base, who was going to discount that?? Not some little corps guy." I did see times when corpse would get into someone's face to 'beleive' to get out of a military commitment, to attend some ministry function. But generally they did not understand the differneces between a civilian job and a military career. I would have to think, that to treat a civilian job in that way [coming or going at a moments notice] would get them fired just as well. "Again, from my experiences....I saw the military guys come and go, at will. They did not have the same "oversight" :D--> from corps looking over their shoulder. Therefore, for you and others to have mortgages without confrontation doesn't surprise me in the very least." Since so few corpse would except an ordination, they could not come on base by themselves, so assigning corpse to a military base seemed kind of useless. They did not speak the same language as does the military. Though a base with 10,000 men 18-24 years old stationed on it would seem an ideal location for outreach. Of course big bases are huge compared to the little ones that I spent most of my time on. "Thank God for our military! Even twi didn't mess around with them! :D-->" Bless you.

hmm washington state; Lots of counters with touch-screen computers, walk up to one select what you want. It displays your information, correct it, press 'done', and soon a clerk calls you to review and make the transaction official. I remember going in for a new license, the test was all on computer, and it seemed that there was never any lines. Here in Connecticut, we routinely have lines wrapping outside the DMV building. Routinely if I go there, I will spend the next 3 hours waiting. That and commonly I can not get done anything in just one trip. You want to register a vehicle in your name, but your insurance card lists both you and your wife as being insured [the names on your insurance card and the registration must match, so off to the insurance office to make a new card with just your name]. Or I buy a new car, and they ask did you go by the town hall first to clear the old car off their tax-rolls, show me proof [so off to find the town hall]. A couple times now they will change which town they will assign to tax me on a car, so first I have to find what town they say is taxing me, then find it's town hall. I have had to pay back-taxes and fines, because I had not paid annual taxes on such car [why am I paying taxes to this town, I have never lived here, and why do I owe back-taxes if I have never heard of this town before?]. In Ct, every year the DMV sends out a list of all registered cars, to the various town halls, so they can assign taxes. Those town halls may send out tax-bills, but they dont have to. The DMV does not send notices when you sale or junk a car, so the towns will continue taxing you for a car until you find that town and prove to their clerk that you dont own the car anymore. If you buy a car, then soon are transfered out of state, rest assured that some goofy little town will be taxing you and fining you until the day [decades later] that you return to Ct. Once you fall behind in your taxes then the towns will notify DMV, and you can no longer register a car, or renew your license. I have lived through this. :-)

It may well be that Bonnie and I were just 'lucky' to have stumbled onto the method of buying homes and financing them with mortgages such that TWI did not care. We have had mortgages, sometimes multiple, from our first in 1985, until now. We were 'in', as late as 1997 and no body ever confronted us concerning our properties, or their mortgages. :-)

vickles: "Isn't it weird how we can experience something and our views of it can be totally different?" hmm, okay. I was stationed there 1991-1997, and I was told that they had recently shifted to being a private company contracted to do those functions. When were you there? and was it government ran? :-)

Vickles- No please dont. It just does not work. Yes you can buy old houses. Yes you can dump money into them and work on them and fix them up. Yes you can re-sale them for a mark-up. Commonly you will 'make' 50% - 90% of how much money you spent on them. I have known various people who have tried, this avenue. While some of them are still trying it. Yes in the end you walk away with a 'nice sum'. but had you put the same amount of money each month into a mason jar and buried it next to the tree in your backyard, and in 3 years dug them all up again, you would break even. Have you read about what Bonnie and I have done with apartment buildings?

Walk into any government ran DMV and you will see good examples of why some things do not work well when ran by the government. On the other hand, I have been in DMVs that were contracted out to bidding contractors. [Washington state]. It was quick and smooth. No lines, no waiting. If a company is doing something, and their personal profit margin is riding on the bottom-line and customer-satisfaction; then they can run an office for very cheap, but very effiecintly. No government agency can do that. With Union coffee-breaks, sick-time, mental-health-days, "you can't make me clean that window, it is not in my job description", "I dont care if someone made a mess in the restroom, you have to wait for janitor to come tonight to clean it". Government ran offices tend to 'feel' like government offices. So long as everyone does their 'job' [as described by their PD] then they are just waiting for the years to tick by and their pension to kick in. Because it is terribly difficult to fire anyone in civil-service. :-)

I would not bother with re-doing a prom. But I would go to all future High-school Re-Unions. I went to my last one, it was the first high-school re-union that i have been able to attend. It was our 25th. I was not real popular in High-school, while I made every picture-day, my photo never appeared in any year-book. At the high-school Re-Union everyone had name-tags with their photos from the senior yearbook on them. Mine was blank. None the less, I went and I wish to attend every Re-Union from now on. I was totally amazed at how poorly many of those people had aged. Standing in a room with 200 people that are all within one year of my age [we were all 43], I was really surprized at how many bald or white-haired wrinkled old people were there. I was the only person there collecting a pension. They had a contest to see: who had the most exotic sounding job, who was still married to their high-school sweetheart, and who was the wealthiest. I saw a girl that I had asked to marry me when we were both 19. At the time, her immediate response was to laugh [un-controllable LOL ROFL]. Looking at her now, made me glad that we did not follow that path. I did attend my prom.

Vickles- thank you, I thought I was just talking too much. I think that one day soon, they will combine 'Yahoo-technology' [the stuff where they predict you next purchase] with insurance 'actuary-tables' and the end result will be something along the lines of: Ooops, you have blue eyes and you were born in January, so the instant you turn 40, odds show that you will default on all your credit; therefore when you hit 39 everyone will foreclose on you first.

vickles: "Zshot, I know this may sound kind of a stupid but I know businesses run this way...if a government worker is valued and they do get a contract in why can't they transfer the government worker to another dept. within the government?" My wife is a federal employeee. Any federal employee [after working for one year] can do a lateral transfer to any other job opening. Employees commonly scan through the OPM listings, looking for interesting openings. If you are currently a 'X', then any 'X' opening across the street or across the nation can be yours. If you are a 'X', but you want to be a 'Y', then you print out the job requirements, and you work on them. Once to fit the minimum requirements for the job, then you can apply for that opening. Again the opening can be in your town, or in any nation that you desire to move to. Through-out all job transfers, you maintain and build your senority. If a job is 'riffed', meaning your job position is closed, then you are given the option of transfering to any other opening that you qualify for. After being riffed, if you go into a lower job, you will maintain you previous salary level and you will continue to make step-increases at that previous level. All 'riffed' employees must be used to fill openings first. Then and only after all riffed employees are working again, then any other government employee who wants to transfer can shift into that opening. This is all before the job can be filled from an application from outside the system. The work to fill all openings from within first. I have known many guys who would get hired as a gate guard, work and attend training to get a whole listing of skills. Then put in for lateral transfers to other jobs. Either the same kind of job, but in a different state where you would rather be, or on the same facility but in a different department. I worked with one fed police officer, who got his license as an electrician, he found an opening at the same base in it's building maintenance office, and one Friday he worked the shift as a police officer and turned in his weapons, the following Monday he went to work one block away as an electrician. He maintained his 10 years of senority, and at that time he had only another 10 years to go to finish his second pension [he was already a military retiree, from before I knew him]. My wife is currently a salesclerk in a commissary. She has already won a federal lawsuit against them for sexual-herassment [she was a produce grocer]. She has applied for a job as a forest ranger, truck driver, and other things, just looking over the listing at other things that she might like to try for a while. The civil service arena is great. :-)

vickles: "Galen, This is the third investor for my mortgage...I just refinanced late last fall. Does this mean that I must be a hot potato? I know my credit isn't perfect but its not really super bad. I do have a bankruptcy from my divorce in '2000 which brings my credit down but I think my credit score is over 600." I know that mortgage notes do have a 'rating'. Though I truly do not know what all goes into making that rating. I would not know how much of your personal credit score goes into it at all. Here is my personal doubts, people only got into reading their 'credit scores' recently. Before that every bank had their own system for determining how good of a 'risk' you were. It was NOT standardized, like it is today. What happened to change things? I do not know. I do know that mortgage notes did have a rating system long ago, and I beleive that such system pre-dates the personal credit-scores of today. Simply because 20 years ago it was close to impossible to track a person's bank accounts, real estate holdings, stocks holdings, and money transactions. You could 'report' to a bank what you wanted them to know, and they could check individual institutions about what you have said, but beyond that they had to trust you. Today everything you do is available to them. Everytime you change a magazine's delivery address it is updated in the magazine publisher's database as a change-of-address, and immediately it is sold to Trans-Union, which updates everyone that you just moved. The only thing that I am fairly sure about concerning a mortgage-note's rating is that it's locked-in interest rate is compared to the current interest rate, and the projected profits are calculated, both short-term and long-term. Long-term profit is handled one way before it is factored into the over-all rating and the short-term profit is factored a different way. Some mortgage-note holders want short-term profit, while others want long-term profit. So each will view that mortage differently. Also each year corporations make many adjustments internaly [whether to ammoratize, to depreciate, etc]. How much [percentage wise] of their holdings are tied up in mortgage-notes, this is something federally regulated. To maintain their FDIC insurance, they must hold this ratio within a narrow margin. But banks make huge profits from 'loaning' money [ie, while performing the loan they charge lots of fees], but once the loan is established they no longer make those fees, so the short-term profits drop. If a bank wants to continue 'making' new loans they must drop the old loans onto another firm, to free up money to allow the bank to generate new mortgages. I am fully aware that I have never taken any classes on this topic, and I know that others exist who know far more about this topic than I. I stand ready to be corrected. :-) P.S. in short, I do not think that your credit rating is connected to when or why any institution will sale your mortgage-note. It is done routinely. I have had mortgage-notes transfered on me many times. It does not mean anything 'bad' about you. It is just a part of how today's corporations do business. Kind of like the president trying to project the future of SSA. If a CEO wants to project that his companys will continue making profit far into the future, then today he needs to dump all extra cash into buying mortgage-notes, this can then be projected into his company's future profits showing that they fully expect to recieve 'X' amount of profits each year out for 'Y' years. "Hooray, what a wise and smart CEO we have, lets give him another bonus". Granted he might just close down a factory [we call it liquidating, they call it ammoratizing] to get the cash to make those purchases with. :-)

vickles: "Galen, have you done this before?" No, though my father does. "It sounds really good but almost also sounds like it could be illegal in some way." No, it is not illegal. "Can you explain more in detail? I would appreciate it." For you anytime. In the example of my father, when he has an extra $30k-ish he calls a broker that he knows. The broker has a listing of mortgages with all their various ratings and face-values. My father is familiar with the 'rating system' used by mortgage companys. The higher the rating, means the more a company wants to keep a mortgage, but the lower ratings mean that the companys are hot to get rid of such mortgage. The lower the rating means that they are willing, no eager to dump it. My impression is that some banking corporations depend on the ratings of their holdings to 'build' their own corporate stock ratings. Anyway, he will end up buying a mortgage note with a face value of anywhere from $60k to $100k [depending on it's rating]. The selling broker then sends notice both: to the home-owner [to alert them that they will soon be sending their payments to a new note-holder], and to the city hall to record the change. Then my father sends the homeowner his address and a letter to reassure the homeowner that everything is cool and secure. Over many years of doing this, he has had a few mortgages go into default. Meaning that sometimes a low 'rated' mortgage will predict that it's homeowner may someday stop paying his monthly payments. In this case, my father must find the town where the house is located. He must travel there, contact the sheriff to have the property vacated, contact the local union halls to re-furbish the property and ensure it is fully up to code and the property is listed with a realtor. So far the properties that he has had to foreclose on have all taken just a few months to be back on the market. When they do sale it immediately turns the investment into money. Every couple of years my father reviews his investments with me, in case one day I must 'assume' them. So, let's say your house was bought for $150k. It's mortgage is face valued at $100k. Should your 'rating' drop below your mortgage holder's threshold of pain, they will drop it to a broker who will sale the note for $30k to $50k. If you lose your job and default on the mortgage, a sheriff will show up someday to escort you from the property. The new owner will fix it up to market ready again and it will sale for $180k. When it does sale, the owner will recieve the full amount of purchase price [minus the realtor cut]. :-)

Ex10- “I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but..... There's much more out there that is way better than PFAL. I encourage you to look around a tad bit.... And I'm not talking splinters or clones. It's a real big Christian world out there.” True, As we have discussed many times before. Your experiences and mine have been entirely different. The Way ministry that you were a part of rarely resembled that which I was a part of. We have discussed this. It is a wonderful world out there. We rather like BG Leonard’s class, we like PFAL, we like doing Word-Studies, we like fellowshipping with others and ministering to them. We have dealt with a few churches, though so often we have found that they are businesses with bottom-lines that they must meet each month and they are often driven by that dollar amount. Overall we do prefer home-based Bible study groups and pastoring. It saddens me that so many were abused by TWI, as it saddens me that so many have been abused by the Baptists from which I find my roots. My wife’s roots are Catholic and we all know how many have been / and still are abused from within that fold. There is a great and wonderful world of Christians out there, but we must look for them and bless them, somehow even while we are on guard for tyrants and abusive systems. I cannot see how it would be possible after our long history of communications that even today you wish to release me from what you experienced within TWI. Such was not my experience, and even describing our fellowships, the fellowships that I have coordinated have been far more fiercely guarded from ‘wolves’, whether ‘loyal’ to TWI, or the Baptist conference, or whatever. Please don’t place your history, and fears, and past abuses onto me, as if I went through them. Thank you. Bless you. WW- “Here, here!” Okay fine, There there. Dmiller- “Really!? Wow -- that's alright. I figured there had to be payment, and a minimal amount of students before a class could run. Good for you.” Hmm, we have not done that for many years. Rascal- “Arrogance learned in twi can be what that keeps us from enjoying meaningfull fellowship with our spiritual bretheren post twi.” I agree, though most often when I say the exact same thing, I get blasted for not liking those who carried that arrogance the most – The Corpse. “ *Fruit* would indicate that the churches that I attend have much more on the ball spiritually than TWI ever did, leading me to believe that the *word* taught in twi, despite their claims, may not have been authentic” I think that both the Mennonites and the Mormons are two great examples of this. We have friends in both communities, and we easily walk among either group. Very loving and ‘fruitful’ believers. Still does not prove to be a guarantee that nobody will be abused or mistreated. :-)

I have DSL service with our baby-bell. It does work very well. Generally very fast up and down. I did use dial-ups, starting in 1983 with Compuserve, then off and on with the Fido boards. This is the first time that I have been in a location where DSL was available and it is great. We are looking at moving soon at an area where again DSL is not available from the local baby-bell, and they have no cable company DSL or otherwise. I have looked at some of the satelite dish options, but I really prefer the {Horizon-to-Horizon H-t-H] dishes because they can select between dozens of satelites for both TV viewing AND internet access. Years ago when we lived in Scotland a model was offered to me and I turned it down hoping that things would get cheaper. Then the Wally-World of satelite dishes came along {DirecTV / Dish-network} and now the market is uglier. In rural areas I have been seeing 'Bug-Ugly-Dishes [bUDS]' taken down and laid on the ground while a miniature Dish-Network unit has been installed in it's place. When I have asked why they made such a change the answer has generally been 'marketing'. Little dishes do less, but their marketing is flooding the air-waves, so people switch. :-)